Dixie Diva Blues (27 page)

Now, I’m not normally such a devious person. Using such a weapon against my parents would be unfair under most circumstances. Feeding and cleaning up after a herd of cats and one neurotic dog is not something to take lightly, however, and no matter how hard I have tried, I always manage to face some sort of critter disaster while my parents are gone.

Mama looked at me in surprise. “Oh, haven’t you heard, Trinket? Jackson Lee called earlier and said all charges against you have been dropped. I thought he said he’d told you, but perhaps I misheard him.”

Drat. “How kind of him to call,” I said through clenched teeth.

Daddy cleared his throat. “He seems to have some notion that you and Bitty are up to something again, but I told him you’d have to be crazy to do anything after all the trouble you’ve had lately.”

My sweet, trusting father. How dear he is to me. How little he really knows me, but how I cherish his misplaced faith in my sanity.

I gave in to the inevitable and asked, “When are you planning to leave?”

“Thursday. We already have a ride to the airport set up. We made the plans before all the recent trouble and didn’t want to bother you until we knew for certain that you’d be all right. It is all right with you if we leave you in charge of the house for a week, isn’t it, dear?”

My vision wavered, then cleared. “Of course,” I said, because really, I could say nothing else.

Mama reached over and patted the hand I still had curled around the top of the chair rail to keep the floor still. “You’re so dependable, Trinket. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

My mother can be just as devious, it seems. I’m sure I learned it at her knee.

Of course, the elusive kitten
was still at large by the time Thursday rolled around and my parents’ ride to the airport was due to arrive. My father had shown me how to set the humane trap, baiting it with chicken or tuna, and where to place it so that the kitten would be sure to find it.

Since every morning my father released a cat from one of the traps he hid around the premises, I already knew the chances of getting the right cat were pretty slim. Still, I paid close attention as he showed me how cleverly he hid the traps in tall grass, behind a wood pile, and even inside a garbage can turned on its side. There were four in all, and he stressed the fact I should check them as soon as possible in the mornings.

“You don’t want to take a chance of leaving a kitten in here all day,” he warned. “A little one like that could suffer trauma pretty quickly. Just take it in to Kit, and he’ll know what to do with it when you finally catch it.”

“Sure,” I said with the full confidence of someone who has no idea what they’re doing. “No trouble at all. I’ll just get up a bit earlier the days I have to work so I can make sure the traps are empty, or to release the wrong cats.”

“Stand back when you open that door. Some of them can get pretty mean,” Daddy said, and I sighed.

“Yes. I know.”

Contrary to all my naïve assumptions when first assisting my parents with their feline philanthropy, cats are rarely grateful to be saved from a lifetime of roaming fields and eating mice. They have to be convinced that being trapped, taken to a vet’s and being poked with needles and changed from fertile to futile is a good thing. None of the cats at my parents seem to mind it so much now, but I imagine that the initial round-up was a bit hectic for all involved. Herding cats requires a special skill, I understand.

Thursday came all too quickly for me. I had already filled out my paperwork at the lingerie shop and gotten a fair idea of my duties, and I was ready to start work. The job itself was pretty straight-forward. All I had to do was stock and sell. Running a cash register had changed a lot, since most transactions are done by computer now, and I had to refresh my skills at that sort of thing. It’d been a long while since I had been on this end of retail.

So after I waved my Colorado-bound parents off with their ride to the airport, I went back inside the house and debated on what to wear on my first day at work. While it’s a small lingerie shop, Carolann carries some really nice things. Vera Wang, Eres, Stella McCartney, Jessica McLintock, and other brand names unfamiliar and unavailable to me or anyone with my limited budget. She also sells candles, fragrances, soaps, toiletries, little unique gifts, and so on, but focuses mostly on garments since Jennie’s Flowers and Gifts across the square also offers one-of-a-kind and handcrafted items.

I had no intention of going beyond the blue velvet curtain into Rose Allgood’s side of the shop. There’s just something creepy about all those plastic penises standing at attention on the shelves. Call me prudish.

When I parked my Taurus in the employee’s lot in back of Carolann’s shop, I saw that I was early. Carolann’s psychedelic van was nowhere to be seen. So I decided to walk across the courthouse square to Budgie’s café for some coffee. And a hot roll, or biscuits and gravy. Maybe fruit cobbler, if it was already made. Then I could jog back across the square to get rid of at least two or three of those calories.

It sounded like an excellent plan, and I implemented it immediately.

Early mornings had begun to be cooler the past few days, and I had worn a nice pair of tan slacks and a pale green blouse. My hair had cooperated for once, and brushed against my shoulders in a nice, even bob. A box of auburn color from the Super Walmart made it shine. I felt pretty darn good.

When I got closer to Budgie’s café, I saw that it was crowded. People clustered outside the door. It looked like I’d be lucky to get a cup of coffee to take with me. It had been a while since I’d been up and out in the work world this early, and I’d had no idea so many Holly Springs citizens gathered for morning coffee at Budgie’s. Surely she was open by now. It was nearly eight o’clock, and the café opened at six.

So why were so many people standing outside?

It wasn’t until I stepped up on the curb that I recognized Bitty. I should have known she’d be at the center of any gathering, but Bitty and early mornings have not always been compatible. With that reasoning, it’s understandable that it took me a little time to realize what she was doing.

“One at a time!” I heard her shout, and saw her point an index finger in the air. “Just one at a time!”

One at a time what?
I wondered, and squeezed myself between a large woman and the brick wall to get closer. The large woman grabbed my arm, startling me until I recognized Miranda Watson.

“You took my warning?” she hissed at me, and I recoiled.

“What warning?”

She made an impatient motion with one hand. “The names—you reported them?”

“Oh, that. Yes. Sort of, anyway.”

She rolled her eyes. “What do you mean,
sort of?”

“I told Rob, and he reported the names to the police.”

Miranda narrowed her eyes at me. “That was foolish. I told you just what to do. Weren’t you listening?”

I got a little irritated. For one thing, I was pretty sure I had just heard Bitty use my name and that always makes me nervous, and for another, Miranda was really crowding my personal space. She had me flattened back against brick and it wasn’t comfortable.

“Look,” I said, “I reported the names you told me, and did the best I could. If you want more done, then you’ll just have to either do it yourself or find someone else.”

“Ohhh!” said Miranda in an exasperated tone. “Try to understand, Trinket, that I can’t do that . . . it’s just . . . well, it’s just better if you do it.”

“I did what you wanted, just not how you wanted. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve heard Bitty say my name twice and I want to see if I’ve won a car or been signed up for jury duty.”

“You can bet it’s not the car,” Miranda said sourly, and I nodded agreement.

“Not in my world.”

By the time I had squeezed my way to the front of the small crowd, my blouse was awry and my slacks uncomfortably twisted. Bitty stood with her back pressed against the glass door of the café, and she had a harried expression.

“What on earth are you doing?” I managed to ask her just as someone’s elbow dug into my spine. “Oof! Stop it!”

I flailed my free hand at the offender, who muttered an apology and comment that all he wanted was the free coffee. Free coffee?

I looked back at Bitty. “Is Budgie giving away free coffee?”

“No,” she said, “I am. With cathead biscuits and sausage gravy, too.”

“Why?”

She gave me an exasperated look. “Well, I can’t talk about it
here
, Trinket!”

“Okay. So what’s the delay? Why is everyone still outside?”

“Budgie locked the door when she saw people getting ugly.”

“Ugly? For free coffee?”

“And gravy and biscuits,” Bitty reminded me. “Who would have thought such a little thing would cause a riot?”

“Indeed.” I looked around at the crowd. Some of them I recognized, but most were strangers to me. “Did you advertise this, Bitty?”

“In
The South Reporter
.”

That explained Miranda Watson’s appearance. As the chief “gossip columnist” reporting the activities of Marshall County citizens, she’d be one of the first to know about a give-away. Apparently, I was the only person in the county who hadn’t heard about it.

“Here comes Budgie,” I said when I saw her approaching the door from the inside. “Maybe she’s going to let everyone in now.”

“Lord, I hope so! The economy must be worse than I thought for all these people to show up acting like starving wolves.”

“It’s always worse than we think,” I said as Budgie turned a key in the lock of the door. She’s a small woman, which means she’s shorter than my five-nine, and wears her black, Jeri-curled hair pulled back on the crown of her head. Budgie likes colorful clothes. Today she wore what looked like an African safari print of bright-hued parrots under her clean, white, starched work apron. She also wore a no-nonsense expression.

Budgie stood like an armed guard in the small crack between door and frame. “I have plenty of coffee and biscuits with sausage gravy, so don’t any of you tromp all over each other to get inside, or I’ll call the sheriff!” she said loudly enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear.

Budgie may not be a large woman, but she grew up with a bunch of siblings and knows how to quell arguments. If not for the fact that she had to put her parents in a nursing home, she’d probably still own the café outright, but at least the new owners kept her on as manager. I imagine if they hadn’t, the café would have gone out of business fairly quickly. People down here expect grits, gravy and biscuits as a staple, which is something a lot of business people from the north don’t understand. They come in and change the menu around, then wonder where their customers went. My parents stopped going to Red Lobster when the corporate advisers decided to stop serving hush puppies with fish. Not that their cheese bread isn’t good. It’s just that it’s not hush puppies.

At any rate, Budgie stood back and people began to file quietly inside the café. I looked over at Bitty when we were the only ones left standing outside.

“Is this kind of philanthropy a new activity?” I asked. “Are you going to start serving in soup lines next?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Trinket.” Bitty smoothed back her tousled hair, but it still looked like a bird had nested in it. “I’m doing this for the Divas.”

“Ah. Are you still trying to make up for Miranda’s gossip column?”

“Kind of. I offered to buy coffee for the entire police force, but there’s some silly policy about not accepting bribes. So I decided to give away coffee and gravy biscuits to everyone, and make sure the police were included.”

“Again, I must ask—
why?
”

Bitty waved her hands in the air. “I don’t know . . . because I didn’t think it would matter to me what people say, but it does. I can’t go anywhere in town without seeing an officer, and the police all seem to be irritated. I don’t like it. No, I just don’t like it!”

“So, you’re going to buy their respect with biscuits and gravy?”

“Have you got a better idea?”

I had to think a moment before I said, “Not really. Carry on, Braveheart.”

“I saw that movie. It had a terrible ending. Mel Gibson was too pretty to end up like that. Although he does seem to have gone a little crazy lately, don’t you think?”

I ignored her last comment. It was too close to the pot calling the kettle black.

“Real life seldom has a perfect ending. Since that movie was based on historical events—rather loosely, I might add—the conclusion was foregone,” I said.

“Are you saying the French princess didn’t fall in love with William Wallace?”

“I’m saying that history records no meetings at all between William Wallace and the French princess.”

“Tragic. I think I like the movie version better.”

I nodded. “You would. So why did I hear you say my name earlier?”

Bitty had to pause and think back. Then she said, “Oh, it was in answer to some guy’s asking me why I believe Rob Rainey is innocent.”